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During the past two weeks my updates and comments on Facebook have become tomes. So, rather than post lengthy diatribes about my political views, I thought I’d take up this blog again.

My real reason for blogging? It’s not the comments from friends in the Romney camp – they either have hidden me or are too polite to respond to my forwards about the dangers we are seeing of a ‘two-party- system’. Nope, it’s the Democrats who are challenging me – both people I know and friends of friends who all repeat the same things over and over again:

Can you live with a Romney presidency? What about the assault on women’s rights?

How can you throw your vote away?

Now, normally I would be really respectful of differing views in public. Doug and I tend to talk and get heated about politics when we are together so that we can do this more easily with friends who disagree with us. But these two questions get to the core of the problem with our system and the Democratic Party as a whole: the Dems have no platform.

I’ve heard nothing about Obama’s stance on the economy, women’s rights, ending the war in Afghanistan. Instead I’ve heard a lot of rhetoric aimed at deflecting Romney’s out of this world statements about his ‘beliefs’. The Democratic campaign seems to be run on nothing more than fumes – powered by empty promises, political contributions and fear. They should change their campaign slogan to:

Vote for me – ‘cuz I’m not the other guy.

In all honesty, these are people who have proven ineffective in leading our country. Regardless of the Republicans blocking things in the legislature, let’s think back to 2001. How many Democrats stood up to Bush when he got us into the Iraq war? Only a handful, the rest – despite huge letter, email and phone campaigns from their constituency – gave Bush carte blanche to enter into an illegal and unjust war. When this happened, I decided to change my party affiliation and became a Green.

The election in 2004 was no different than what we have now — Kerry’s campaign slogan again based on fear about Bush’s policies. A party with so much fear of the other can never truly stand up for the rights of the people. A party that doesn’t have a coherent platform and the courage to negotiate doesn’t deserve my vote. A party that is so fearful of other parties taking up their traditional ideals that they sue them (like Nadar and Camejo) is undeserving of my attention.

Third parties are seeing a huge rise in their memberships this election year. And while I’ve traditionally supported the Greens, I’m particularly encouraged to see a new player on the scene – Rocky Anderson. His platform is simple, transparent and based on the principles I hold dear. His power comes from within – his ideals, experience and principles things that he’s successfully put into practice in the political realm.

So many things are so crazy in our lives right now that I seem to have become an election junkie to keep my mind busy… (May also be because I majored in poli-sci as an undergrad…)

This election is so amazing. Least of which for the plethora of videos and blogs dedicated to it.

So far here are my all-time favorite campaign videos. I love the Japanese & Russian videos because they make me really nostalgic for the times when I lived in those countries. And I have been so taken with Biden recently. (When he mentioned his family during the VP debate, I actually teared up.)